America’s Neocrusaders are a strange and sometimes conflicted lot. They rage and fume at what they view as the excesses and extremes of Islam, and want to ban it from the US (if not eradicate it everywhere), but frequently they’re guilty of more than a few excesses and extremes of their own. An example of this is Terry Jones, pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL, a Christofascist crank I’ve blogged about many times, who turns out to have run afoul of the authorities in Germany during the time he tried to missionize there.

One of the men behind the anti-Muslim film trailer on YouTube that has sparked violent protests at Western embassies across the Middle East, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was taken in for questioning by federal probation officers early Saturday morning, law enforcement officials said. …

In June 2010, Mr. Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison for orchestrating a check-kiting scheme.

Though he served only about a year in prison, part of his sentence also prohibited him from using the Internet for five years without permission from his probation officer, court record show.

The incendiary, amateurish video, which depicts the prophet Mohammad as a buffoon, a womanizer, and a child molester, was first uploaded to YouTube in June and translated to Arabic and uploaded several more times in the week leading up to the Sept. 11 anniversary.

Authorities are questioning whether or not Nakoula had used the Internet in order to produce and/or promote the movie, and thus violated his probation. He certainly had been deceptive, while producing the film:

Mr. Nakoula, the former owner of a gas station near his home, apparently used a series of pseudonyms while making and discussing the film, even when dealing with some of the actors, who believed they were making a film called “Desert Warriors.”

One actress said she had no idea Mohammad was even a character in the film, which was produced in 2011 in the remote hills of Los Angeles County.

In addition, as part of the bank fraud scheme for which he was convicted in 2010, prosecutors also alleged that Mr. Nakoula possessed at least 15 credit and debit cards in the names of other people, along with at least five identification documents that were not issued lawfully.

I question the degree to which Nakoula’s cast and crew could have been this ignorant of the content of the movie they were making … but it is possible, I suppose, for some — i.e. those with small parts or minor production involvement — to have been unaware of its true nature.

The bottom line is, people who complain about the evils of Islam, have no moral ground to stand on, if it turns out they have questionable pasts, themselves. They are, in short, hypocrites. In the case of Christians who fit this description, they’re guilty of disobeying the founder of their own religion, who clearly and explicitly ordered them never to engage in hypocritical behavior of any kind, at any time.

P.S. I love how this character is willing to produce a film that insults Islam, and is enough of a publicity hound to work hard at promoting it as widely as he can … yet he doesn’t have the courage to show his face, and feels the need to parade around dressed up like a bandito in some campy old Western. Yeah, he’s a hypocrite all right. In multiple ways.